Man and the World of Stars

Schmidt Number: S-5103

On-line since: 15th March, 2017

THE
SPIRITUAL COMMUNION OF MANKIND

I

Midsummer and Midwinter Mysteries.

Dornach, December 23, 1922

THE Christmas festival can be the occasion for comparing
the Mystery upon which it is based with Mysteries that were the
outcome of different conditions in the evolution of humanity.
The Christmas Mystery — when it is conceived as a Mystery
— belongs paramountly to Winter. It arose from
conceptions of the spiritual world that had primarily to do
with the link established between man and the scene of his life
on Earth at the beginning of Winter.

When we turn our attention to Mysteries that were celebrated in
certain parts of Asia long before the founding of Christianity
and in which many sublime cosmic thoughts were given
expression, or when we compare the Christmas festival with
Mysteries that were celebrated also in pre-Christian times, in
Middle, Northern and Western Europe, we are struck by the fact
that they were preeminently Summer Mysteries, connected
with the union between man and all that takes place in earthly
life during the time of Summer. To understand the essential
meaning of these Mysteries we must think, first of all, of that
part of the evolution of humanity which preceded the Mystery of
Golgotha.

Looking back into very ancient times we find that the Mysteries
were institutions of men still possessed of the faculty of
instinctive clairvoyance. In certain states of consciousness
between those of full sleep and waking, in states where dreams
were expressions of reality, the men belonging to that ancient
humanity were still able to gaze into the spiritual worlds
whence the human being descends into his physical body on the
Earth. Every human being in those times could speak and think
about the spiritual worlds, just as a man today can speak about
the ordinary knowledge he has learnt at school. I have, as you
know, often said that what the men of those olden times beheld
of the spiritual-supersensible world presented itself to them
in pictures — not the pictures of dreams but
somewhat resembling them. Whereas we know quite well that the
pictures in our dreams are woven from our reminiscences, that
they rise up from the organism and, unlike our thoughts, do not
mirror reality, through the very nature of the Imaginations of
the old clairvoyance men knew that they were the expressions
— not, it is true, of any external, material reality nor
of any historical reality, but of a spiritual world lying
hidden behind the physical world. Thus the spiritual world was
revealed to men in pictures.

But
it must not be imagined that those men of an earlier epoch had
no thoughts. They had thoughts, but they did not acquire
them as man acquires his thoughts today. If a man of the modern
age is to have thoughts, he must exert himself inwardly; he
must elaborate his thoughts by dint of inner effort. A similar
kind of activity was, it is true, exercised by the men of old
in connection with the pictures which mirrored for them a
spiritual form of existence; but the thoughts came with the
pictures. One may well be amazed at the power and brilliance of
the thoughts of that old humanity; but the thoughts were not
formulated by dint of effort; they were received as
revelations.

Now
just as we today have schools and colleges, so in those times
there were Mysteries — institutions in which science, art
and religion were undivided. No distinction was made between
belief and knowledge. Knowledge came in the form of pictures;
but belief was based securely on knowledge. Nor was any
distinction made between what men fashioned out of various
materials into works of art, and what they acquired as wisdom.
Today the distinction is made by saying: What man acquires in
the form of wisdom must be true; but what he embodies in
his materials as a painter, sculptor or musician — that
is fantasy!

Goethe was really the last survivor of those who did not
hold this view. He regarded as truth both what he embodied in
his materials as an artist and what he took to be science. The
philistinism expressed in the distinction between the artistic
and the scientific did not, in fact, appear until comparatively
late, indeed after Goethe's time. Goethe was still able, when
he saw the works of art in Italy, to utter the beautiful words:
“I have the idea that in the creation of their works of
art the Greeks proceeded by the same laws by which Nature
herself creates and of which I am on the track.” In
Weimar, before going to Italy, he and Herder had studied the
philosophy of Spinoza together. Goethe had striven to deepen
his realization that all the beings in man's environment are
permeated by the divine-spiritual. He also tried to discover
the manifestations of this divine-spiritual in details, for
example in the leaf and flower of the plant. And the way in
which he built up for himself a picture of the plant form and
animal-form in his botanical and zoological studies was
identical as an activity of soul with the procedure he adopted
in his artistic creations.

Today it is considered unscientific to speak of one and the
same truth in art, in science and in religion. But as I have
said, in those ancient centres of learning and culture, art,
science and religion were one. It was actually the leaders in
these Mysteries who began gradually to separate out particular
thoughts from those that were revealed to men with their
instinctive clairvoyance and to establish a wisdom composed of
thoughts. On all sides we see a wisdom composed of thoughts
emerging in the Mysteries from clairvoyant vision. Whereas the
majority of men were content with pictorial vision, were
satisfied to have the revelation of this spiritual vision
presented to them in the form of myths, fairy-tales and legends
by those who were capable of doing so, the leaders of the
Mysteries were working at the development of a wisdom composed
of thoughts. But they were fully aware that this wisdom was
revealed, not acquired by man's own powers.

We
must try to transport ourselves into this quite different
attitude of soul. I will put it in the following way. —
When the man of today conceives a thought, he ascribes it to
his own activity of thinking. He forms chains of thoughts in
accordance with rules of logic — which are themselves the
product of his own thinking. The man of olden times
received the thoughts. He paid no heed at all to how the
connections between thoughts should be formulated, for they
came to him as revelations. But this meant that he did not live
in his thoughts in the way we live in ours We regard our
thoughts as the possession of our soul; we know that we have
worked to acquire them. They have, as it were, been born from
our own life of soul, they have arisen out of ourselves, and we
regard them as our property. The man of olden time could not
regard his thoughts in this way. They were illuminations; they
had come to him together with the pictures. And this gave rise
to a very definite feeling and attitude towards the
wisdom-filled thoughts. Man said to himself as he contemplated
his thoughts: “A divine Being from a higher world has
descended into me. I partake of the thoughts which in reality
other Beings are thinking — Beings who are higher
than man but who inspire me, who live in me, who give me these
thoughts. I can therefore only regard the thoughts as having
been vouchsafed to me by Grace from above.” It was
because the man of old held this view that he felt the need at
certain seasons to make an offering of these thoughts to the
higher Beings, as it were through his feelings. And this was
done in the Summer Mysteries.

In
the Summer the Earth is more given up to its own environment,
to the atmosphere surrounding it. It has not contracted because
of the cold or enveloped itself in a raiment of snow; it is in
perpetual intercourse with its atmospheric environment. Hence
man too is given up to the wide cosmic expanse. In the Summer
he feels himself united with the Upper Gods. And in those
ancient times man waited for the Midsummer season — the
time when the Sun is at the zenith of its power — in
order at this season and in certain places he regarded as
sacred, to establish contact with the Upper Gods. He availed
himself of his natural connection in Summer with the whole
etheric environment, in order out of his deepest feelings to
make a sacrificial offering to the Gods who had revealed their
thoughts to him.

The
teachers in the Mysteries spoke to their pupils somewhat as
follows. They said: “Every year at Midsummer, a solemn
offering must be made to the Upper Gods in gratitude for the
thoughts they vouchsafe to man. For if this is not done it is
all too easy for the Luciferic powers to invade man's thinking
and he is then permeated by these powers. He can avoid this if
every Summer he is mindful of how the Upper Gods have given him
these thoughts and at the Midsummer season lets his thoughts
flow back again, as it were, to the Gods.” In this way
the men of olden times tried to safeguard themselves from
Luciferic influences. The leaders of the Mysteries called
together those who were in a sense their pupils and in their
presence enacted that solemn rite at the culmination of which
the thoughts that had been revealed by the Upper Gods were now
offered up to them in upward-streaming feelings.

The
external rite consisted in solemn words being spoken into
rising smoke which was thus set into waves. This act was merely
meant to signify that the offering made by man's inmost soul to
the Upper Gods was being inscribed into an outer medium —
the rising smoke — through form-creating words. The words
of the prayer inscribed into the rising smoke the feelings
which the soul desired to send upwards to the Gods as an
offering for the thoughts they had revealed.

This was the basic mood of soul underlying the celebration of
the Midsummer Mysteries. These Midsummer festivals had meaning
only as long as men received their thoughts by way of
revelation.

But
in the centuries immediately preceding the Mystery of Golgotha
— beginning as early as the 8th and 9th centuries B.C.
— these thoughts that were revealed from above grew dark,
and more and more there awakened in man the faculty to acquire
his thoughts through his own efforts. This induced in him an
entirely different mood. Whereas formerly he had felt that his
thoughts were coming to him as it were from the far spaces of
the universe, descending into his inner life, he now began to
feel the thoughts as something unfolding within himself,
belonging to him like the blood in his veins. In olden times,
thoughts had, been regarded more as something belonging to man
like the breath — the breath that is received from
the surrounding atmosphere and continually given back again.
Just as man regards the air as something which surrounds him,
which he draws into himself but always gives out again, so did
he feel his thoughts as something which he did not draw into
himself but which was received by him through revelation and
must ever and again be given back to the Gods at the time of
Midsummer.

The
festivals themselves were given a dramatic form in keeping with
this attitude. The leaders of the Mysteries went to the
ceremonies bearing the symbols of wisdom; and as they conducted
the sacrificial rites they divested themselves of the symbols
one by one. Then, when they went away from the ceremonies,
having laid aside the symbols of wisdom, they appeared as men
who must acquire their wisdom again in the course of the year.
It was like a confession on the part of those sages of olden
times. When they had made the solemn offering it was as though
they declared to the masses of those who were their followers:
“We have become nescient again.”

To
share in this way in the course taken by the seasons of the
year, entering as Midsummer approaches into the possession of
wisdom, then passing into a state of nescience (Torheit)
before becoming wise again — this was actually felt by
men to be a means of escape from the Luciferic powers. They
strove to participate in the life of the cosmos. As the cosmos
lets Winter alternate with Summer, so did they let the time of
wisdom alternate in themselves with the time of entry into the
darkness of ignorance.

Now
there were some whose wisdom was needed all the year round, and
who for this reason could not act or adopt the same procedure
as the others. For example, there were teachers in the
Mysteries who practised the art of healing — for that too
was part of the Mysteries. Naturally it would not do for a
doctor to become ignorant in August and September — if I
may use the present names of the months — so these men
were allowed to retain their wisdom, but in return they made
the sacrifice of being only servants in the Mysteries. Those
who were the leaders became ignorant for a certain time every
year.

Reminiscences of this have remained here and there, for example
in the figure described by Goethe in his poem Die
Geheimnisse as the ‘Thirteenth,’ the one who was the leader
of the others but was himself in a state of dullness rather
than wisdom.

All
these things are evidence that the attitude towards the guiding
wisdom of mankind was entirely different from what it
afterwards became when men began to regard their thoughts as
produced by themselves. Whereas formerly man felt that wisdom
was like the air he breathes, later on he felt that his
thoughts were produced within himself, like the blood. We can
therefore say: In ancient times man felt his thoughts to be
like the air of the breath and in the epoch of the Mystery of
Golgotha he began to feel that they were like the blood within
him.

But
then man also said to himself: “What I experience as
thought is now no longer heavenly, it is no longer something
that has descended from above. It is something that arises in
the human being himself, something that is earthly.”
— This feeling that the thoughts of men are earthly in
origin was still significantly present at the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha among those who were the late successors of
the leaders of the ancient Mysteries. Those who stood at that
time at the height of cultural life said to themselves: Man can
no longer have such thoughts as had the sages of old, who with
their thoughts lived together with the Gods; he must now
develop purely human thoughts. But these purely human thoughts
are in danger of falling prey to the Ahrimanic powers. The
thoughts that were revealed to man from above were in danger of
succumbing to the Luciferic powers; the human thoughts, the
self-produced thoughts, are in danger of succumbing to the
Ahrimanic powers.

Those who were capable of thinking in this way in the epoch of
the Mystery of Golgotha — by the 4th century, however,
the insight was lost — such men experienced the Mystery
of Golgotha as the true redemption of mankind. They said to
themselves: The spiritual Power indwelling the Sun could
hitherto be attained only by superhuman forces. This Power must
now be attained by human faculties, for man's thoughts are now
within his own being. Hence he must inwardly raise these
thoughts of his to the Divine. Now that he is an earthly
thinker, he must permeate his thoughts inwardly with the
Divine, and this he can do through uniting himself in thought
and feeling with the Mystery of Golgotha.

This meant that the festival once celebrated in the Mysteries
at Midsummer became a Winter festival. In Winter, when
the earth envelops herself in her raiment of snow and is no
longer in living interchange with the atmosphere around her,
man too is fettered more strongly to the earth; he does not
share in the life of the wide universe but enters into the life
that is rooted beneath the soil of the earth. — But the
meaning of this must be understood.

We
can continually be made aware of how in the earth's environment
there is not only that which comes directly from the Sun but
also that which partakes in the life of the earth beneath the
surface of the soil. I have spoken of this before by referring
to some very simple facts. — Those of you who have lived
in the country will know how the peasants dig pits in the earth
during Winter and put their potatoes in them. Down there in the
earth the potatoes last splendidly through the Winter, which
would not be the case if they were simply put in cellars. Why
is this? — Think of an area of the earth's surface. It
absorbs the light and warmth of the Sun that have streamed to
it during the Summer. The light and the warmth sink down, as it
were, into the soil of the earth, so that in Winter the Summer
is still there, under the soil. During Winter it is Summer
underneath the surface of the earth. And it is this Summer
under the surface of the earth in Winter time that enables the
roots of the plants to thrive. The seeds become roots and
growth begins. So when we see a plant growing this year it is
actually being enabled to grow by the forces of last
year's Sun which had penetrated into the earth.

When therefore we are looking at the root of a plant, or even
at parts of the leaves, we have before us what is the
previous Summer in the plant. It is only in the blossom
that we have this year's Summer, for the blossom is
conjured forth by the light and warmth of the present year's
Sun. In the sprouting and unfolding of the plant we still have
the previous year and the present year comes to manifestation
only in the blossom. Even the ovary at the centre of the
blossom is a product of the Winter — in reality, that is,
of the previous Summer. Only what surrounds the ovary
belongs to the present year. Thus do the seasons
interpenetrate. When the earth dons her Winter raiment of snow,
beneath that raiment is the continuation of Summer. Man does
not now unite himself with the wide expanse but turns his life
of soul inwards, into the interior of the earth. He turns to
the Lower Gods.

This was the conception held by men who were in possession of
the heritage of the ancient wisdom at the time of the Mystery
of Golgotha. And it was this that made them realize: It is in
what is united with the earth that we must seek the power of
the Christ, the power of the new wisdom which permeates the
future evolution of the earth. Having passed to the stage of
self-produced thoughts, man felt the need to unite these
thoughts inwardly with the Divine, to permeate them inwardly
with the Divine, in other words, with the Christ Impulse. This
he can do at the time when he is most closely bound to the
earth — in deep Winter; he can do it when the earth shuts
herself off from the cosmos. For then he too is shut off from
the cosmos and comes nearest to the God who descended from
those far spaces and united Himself with the earth.

It
is a beautiful thought to connect the Christmas festival with
the time when the earth is shut off from the cosmos, when in
the loneliness of earth man seeks to establish for his
self-produced thoughts communion with
divine-spiritual-supersensible reality, and when, understanding
what this means, he endeavors to protect himself from the
Ahrimanic powers, as in ancient times he protected himself from
the Luciferic powers through the rites of the Midsummer
Mysteries.

And
as under the guidance of the teachers in the Mysteries the man
of olden time became aware through the Midsummer festival that
his thoughts were fading into a state of twilight, the man of
today who rightly understands the Christmas Mystery should feel
strengthened when at Christmas he steeps himself in truths such
as have now once more been expressed. He should feel how
through developing a true relation to the Mystery of Golgotha,
the thoughts he acquires in the darkness of his inner life can
be illumined. For it is indeed so when he realizes that once in
the course of the earth's evolution the Being who in
pre-Christian ages could only be thought of as united with the
Sun, passed into earthly evolution and together with mankind
indwells the earth as a Spiritual Being. In contrast to the old
Midsummer festivals where the aim was that a man should pass
out of himself into the cosmos, the Christmas festival should
be the occasion when man tries to deepen inwardly, to
spiritualize, whatever knowledge he acquires about the great
world.

The
man of old did not feel that knowledge was his own possession
but that it was a gift bestowed upon him, and every year he
gave it back again. The man of today necessarily regards his
world of thought, his intellectual knowledge, as his own
possession. Therefore he must receive into his heart the Spirit
Being who has united with the Earth; he must link his thoughts
with this Being in order that instead of remaining with his
thoughts in egotistic seclusion, he shall unite these thoughts
of his with that Being of Sun and Earth who fulfilled the
Mystery of Golgotha.

In
a certain respect the ancient Mysteries had what might be
called an ‘aristocratic’ character. Indeed the principle of
aristocracy really had its origin in those old Mysteries, for
it was the priests who enacted the sacrifice on behalf of all
the others.

The
Christmas festival has a ‘democratic’ character. What modern
men acquire as that which really makes them man, is their inner
store of thoughts. And the Christmas Mystery is only truly
celebrated when the one does not make the sacrificial offering
for another, but when the one shares with the other a common
experience: equality in face of the Sun Being who came down to
the Earth. And in the early period of Christian evolution
— until about the 4th century — it was this that
was felt to be a particularly significant principle of
Christianity. It was not until then that the old forms of the
Egyptian Mysteries were resuscitated and made their way via
Rome to Western Europe, overlaying the original Christianity
and shrouding it in traditions which will have to be superseded
if Christianity is to be rightly understood. For the character
with which Christianity was invested by Rome was essentially
that of the old Mysteries. In accordance with true
Christianity, this finding of the spiritual-supersensible
reality in man must take place at a time not when he
passes out of himself and is given up to the Cosmos, but when
he is firmly within himself. And this is most of all the
case when he is united with the Earth at the time when the
Earth herself is shut off from the cosmic expanse — that
is to say, in Midwinter.

I
have thus tried to show how it came about that in the course of
the ages the Midsummer festivals in the Mysteries changed into
the Midwinter Christmas Mystery. But this must be understood in
the right sense. By looking back over the evolution of humanity
we can deepen our understanding of what is presented to us in
the Christmas Mystery. By contrasting it with olden times we
can feel the importance of the fact that man has now to look
within himself for the secrets he once sought to find
outside his own being.

It
is from this point of view that my Occult Science is
written. If such a book had been written in ancient times
(then, of course, it would not have been a book but something
different!) the starting-point of the descriptions would have
been the starry heavens. But in the book as it is, the
starting-point is man: contemplation, first of the inner
aspect of man's being and proceeding from there to the
universe. The inner core of man's being is traced through the
epochs of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and extended to the
future epochs of the Earth's evolution.

In
seeking for knowledge of the world in ancient times, men
started by contemplating the stars; then they endeavored to
apply to the inner constitution of the human being what they
learned from the stars. For example, they contemplated the Sun
which revealed a very great deal to the Imaginative cognition
of those days. To the orthodox modern scientist, the Sun is a
ball of gas — which of course it cannot be for unbiased
thought. When the man of ancient time contemplated the Sun
externally, it was to him the bodily expression of
soul-and-spirit, just as the human body is an expression of
soul-and-spirit. Very much was learnt from the Sun. And when
man had read in the Cosmos what the Sun had revealed to him, he
could point to his own heart, and say: Now I understand the
nature of the human heart, for the Sun has revealed it to me!
— And similarly in the other heavenly bodies and
constellations, man discovered the secrets of his organism.

It
was not possible to proceed in this way in the book Occult
Science. Although it is too soon yet for all the relevant
details to have been worked out, the procedure is that we
think, first, of the human being as a whole, with heart, lungs,
and so on, and in understanding the organs individually we come
to understand the universe. We study the human heart, for
example, and what we read there tells us what the Sun is, tells
us something about the nature of the Sun. Thus through the
heart we learn to know the nature of the Sun; that is to say,
we proceed from within outwards. In ancient times it was the
other way about: first of all, men learnt to know the nature of
the Sun and then they understood the nature of the human heart.
In the modern age we learn what the heart is, what the lung is
... and so, starting from man, we learn to know the
universe.

The
ancients could only give expression to their awareness of this
relation of man to the universe by looking upwards to the Sun
and the starry heavens at the time of Midsummer, when
conditions were the most favorable for feeling their union with
the Cosmos. But if we today would realize with inner intensity
how we can come to know the universe, we must gaze into the
depths of man's inner being. And the right time for this is in
Midwinter, at Christmas.

Try
to grasp the full meaning of this Christmas thought, my dear
friends, for there is a real need today to give life again to
old habits such as these. We need, for example, to be sincere
again in our experience of the course of the year. All that
numbers of people know today about Christmas is that it is a
time for giving presents, also — perhaps, a time when in
a very external way, thought is turned to the Mystery of
Golgotha!

It
is superficialities such as these that are really to blame for
the great calamity into which human civilization has drifted
today. It is there that much of the real blame must be placed;
it lies in the clinging to habits, and in the unwillingness to
realize the necessity of renewal — the need, for
example, to imbue the true Christmas thought, the true
Christmas feeling, with new life.

This impulse of renewal is needed because we can only become
Man again in the true sense by finding the spiritual part of
our being. It is a ‘World-Christmas’ that we need, a birth of
spiritual life. Then we shall once again celebrate Christmas as
honest human beings; again there will be meaning in the fact
that at the time when the Earth is shrouded in her raiment of
snow, we try to feel that our world of thought is permeated
with the Christ Impulse — the world of thought which
today is like the blood within us, in contrast to the old world
of thought which was like the breath.

We
must learn to live more intensely with the course of the
seasons than is the custom today. About 20 years ago the idea
occurred that it would be advantageous to have a fixed Easter
— a festival which is still regulated by the actual
course of time. The idea was that Easter should be fixed
permanently at the beginning of April, so that account books
might not always be thrown into confusion owing to the dates of
the festival varying each year. Even man's experience of the
flow of time was to be drawn into the materialistic trend of
evolution. In view of other things that have happened as well,
it would not be surprising if materialistic thought were
ultimately to accept this arrangement. For example, men begin
the year with the present New Year's Day, the 1st of January,
in spite of the fact that December (decern) is the tenth month,
and January and February quite obviously belong to the previous
year; so that in reality the new year can begin in March at the
earliest — as indeed was actually the case in Roman
times. But it once pleased a French King (whom even history
acknowledges to have been an imbecile) to begin the year in the
middle of the Winter, on the 1st of January, and humanity has
followed suit.

Strong and resolute thoughts are needed to admit honestly to
ourselves that the saving of human evolution depends upon man
allying himself with wisdom. Many things indicate that
he has by no means always done so but has very often allied
himself with ignorance, with nescience. The Christmas thought
must be taken sincerely and honestly, in connection with the
Being who said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the
Life.” But the way to the Truth and to the Life in the
Spirit has to be deliberately sought, and for this it is
necessary for modern humanity to plunge down into the dark
depths of midnight in order to find the light that kindles
itself in man.

The
old tradition of the first Christmas Mass being read at
midnight is not enough. Man must again realize in actual
experience that what is best and most filled with light in his
nature is born out of the darkness prevailing in himself.
The true light is born out of the darkness. And from
this darkness light must be born — not further
darkness.

Try
to permeate the Christmas thought with the strength that will
come to your souls when you feel with all intensity that the
light of spiritual insight and spiritual vision must pierce the
darkness of knowledge of another kind. Then in the Holy Night,
Christ will be born in the heart of each one of you, and you
will experience together with all mankind, a
World-Christmas.